GOP Constituents Also Depend on Jobless Aid

In this Jan. 10, 2014, photo, Nita Ness, 58, talks about her unemployment status at her home in Colorado Springs, Colo. Photo: Photo: AP/Ed Andrieski

When federal emergency unemployment benefits expired last month, the effects ran deep in a Colorado county marked by two exit ramps off Interstate 25 - one leading to the conservative religious group Focus on the Family, the other to the Fort Carson Army post.

Hardly a liberal bastion, El Paso County has the largest number of people in the state who lost unemployment benefits, and many aren't happy about it. Plenty of Republicans, too, depend on jobless aid that Republicans in Congress are hesitant to prolong. The ideological argument for standing against an extension of benefits - that the aid can ultimately make it harder to find work - meets a more complex reality where people live.

Democrats propose to extend the emergency benefits for people who have been or are about to be out of work for more than six months; Republicans are less inclined to take that step, particularly if it means the government borrows more money. The paralysis led to the expiration of benefits for 1.3 million long-term unemployed on Dec. 28. Lawmakers are still working on a compromise.

The standoff infuriates people such as Lita Ness, who lost her job as a civilian contractor at Peterson Air Force Base in August 2012 and just received her final check from the unemployment office.

"I'm registered as a Republican, but if they continue to use this not extending our (aid) I'm probably changing to Democrat," Ness, 58, said as she took a break from a computer training class at the Pikes Peak Workforce Center. "People in our district who vote 'No' on this, I'm not going to support them."

El Paso County is represented by Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, a conservative who has objected to the extension of unemployment benefits unless they are fully paid for with money from elsewhere in the budget. "It's $6 billion, doesn't do anything to create jobs," Lamborn's spokesman, Jarred Rego, said of the Democrats' proposal. "House Republicans remain focused on creating jobs and improving the economy."

The overwhelmingly Republican district is considered a safe one for Lamborn. The lone Democrat who has announced a challenge, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Irv Halter, accused Lamborn of indifference to his constituents. "This is just another example of Congressman Lamborn being out of touch," Halter said in a statement.

There are no data showing the political affiliation of people who lost their emergency jobless benefits or tracking them by congressional district. Democratic staff on the House Ways and Means Committee crunched their own data from 20 states to demonstrate that jobless benefits have a bipartisan reach. They claim conservative stalwarts such as John Fleming in Louisiana and Michele Bachmann in Minnesota represent districts with disproportionately high percentages of people who drew the emergency benefits.

Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said those who lost benefits are "just a cross-section of the unemployed. They're not going to be predominantly Democratic or predominantly Republican. They're just going to be workers who had the bad luck to lose a job in the worst recession we've had in 70 years."

Economists generally say the longer-term unemployed tend to be older - a slice of the population that has become more supportive of Republicans in recent elections. Older workers may be more reluctant than younger ones to change fields of employment and surrender the advantages of years of experience.

Lengthy unemployment aid can exacerbate this problem by making it easier for those on aid to hold out for jobs that are similar to the ones they lost, said James Sherk, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "As the benefits draw down, they expand their search to jobs they wouldn't consider before," Sherk said. "But it's going to be a lot harder for them to find a job with one year out of work than with three months out of work."

"There's just a lot of places where workers are going to have to make wrenching decisions," Sherk said.

El Paso County spreads out beneath Pikes Peak to the arid high plains that stretch toward Kansas. It is dominated by conservative Colorado Springs and its surrounding military facilities, which include the Air Force Academy, NORAD and Fort Carson. The area's aerospace and defense industry was hit hard by last year's automatic cuts in federal spending, which economists blame for aggravating a persistent joblessness problem.

At the workforce center, desperation for help co-exists with the area's self-reliant conservative ethos.

One Army veteran who has been unemployed since his discharge last year rushed into the center after hearing his benefits may expire shortly. "If it gets cut off, it's nothing I'm ready for," said the man, who refused to give his name, fearing people would learn he's getting jobless aid. "I understand, you can't keep people on it forever. It's important to get people working."

Others feel that after having contributed to society, they are now being abandoned by the government. "I paid my taxes. I've helped people my whole life," said Barbara Greene, 59, who lost her job as a medical secretary in a hospital last year and expects her jobless benefits to end in March, "and now they're just throwing me to the side."

Ness started working as a maid at age 16. She spent her last 17 years in the labor force working in logistics and acquisitions at the Air Force base. For the past 17 months she's been unable to find a job that comes close to what she had. The only positions she's been offered interviews for are in call centers and pay about $9 an hour - less than she made three decades ago. She's been stunned at how "incredibly competitive" the job market is now.

"I find it very offensive when they say people on unemployment are just milking it," Ness said. "I'm not a big fan of rejection and I get rejected every day."

(Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)